Boy,,,Sugarbrie hit it on the head. It is a numbers game, and we've all seen the number of former "high-end" stores that have sold their souls to home theater in order to survive. Remembering the Beta vs. VHS thing..it was never a question of which was better,..but which sold the most to the average user. With most people that would have been high-enders years ago, now being in the "lets rent 2 movies every night of the week" group you can bet their interest in SACD is...well most people don't even know that either of the higher resolution formats even exist..or care. I wish Sony well, I would love to have the sound of vinyl with the convienence and lack of surface noise of the digital format, but with better sound than current RedBook. However, let's face it...the high-end is a difficult business for a manufacturer or retailer to make money in now-a-days.
New formats, same old story?
OK, we continue to be inundated by advice to upgrade to a new digital format. Most say SACD, the rest tell us that DVD-A will be the ticket. My thing is that I would be ready to buy if things were sorted out. They are not yet. It doesn't look any clearer to me than it did a year ago today. Am I blind? Neither has taken precedence. More importantly, neither has had the major influx of software we have been waiting for. A major determinant as to which one wins out in the end. Yes, SOFTWARE. Where is it? Sure, there are some titles out there(how many currently???), but new albums are still more often than not released CD only. The people at the record stores still have not heard of either of the new formats. Yes, I know Sony keeps dangling the influx of new players(even cheap ones) at us, but I am still in the same mindset I was last year. That I don't want to invest in a new player that won't be a REAL step up in terms of CD playback(which would make it worth it) until one of the formats emerges as the future path. And, once the players come, will they be obsoleted by a new twist a couple of years later? As in multichannel - which I am not interested in, or by offering a digital output of the new format's signal. Are my feelings correct, or do I need the way I see things corrected? Thank you.